


Love Me for the House and Grave, and for Something Higher

by SevenBetter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But alas I have made y'all wait long enough for this story, But still don't really "belong", Dubious legal references, F/M, I wanted to do a lot of research and really dig into how they both got exonerated, LOTSA sexual tension, Not too graphic but ye be warned, Overly enthusiastic but trying to hide it Ben, Pompous french restaurants, Some angst, Some pining, TW: there is some violence in the final chapter, The story is set in 2002, They are both former death row inmates, Wary Rey, Who have functionally integrated back into the world, foster parenting, set in chicago
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:21:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26598997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenBetter/pseuds/SevenBetter
Summary: Once we condemn someone to die, it's not often we stop to further investigate their innocence.Rarely, though, we come to realize we were wrong. That they deserve to live.How do you build a new life, after so many years of being told yours will end?How do you find people who understand?Everyone thinks that they know Rey. They don't. But Ben does.
Relationships: But to be clear "Kylo" is dead and stays dead, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 25
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! I want to thank everyone for their patience during my long writing hiatus. I am one of those whose job got busier and a lot more complicated due to COVID, and that's something I am still adjusting to. 
> 
> But after a lot of time away from posting, I'm excited to begin again. 
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who voted between my two new stories and chose this one as the first to be finished. Hope you like it :)

Title from ["A Man's Requirements"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50335/a-mans-requirements) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

\--------------

Ben has to jiggle the doorknob four times before it finally un-sticks.

By that point, he's already shoving his shoulder against the wood as he does so, and when the door finally bursts open, the weight of his body causes it to go crashing back again the wall with a loud bang he hopes no one inside the rectory could hear. 

There aren't many places that will host them: he's not keen on compromising one of the only places that will.

He makes his way down to the damp, gray basement and goes through the motions as easily as breathing, utterly without notice. He makes and sets out the coffee in a white insulated carafe, he lays out the box of cookies that's always left on the edge of the steel table in the kitchen.

He places the chairs in a circle, ten, just like always. 

And then he waits. He's waited here every Thursday evening, for an hour and a half, rain, sun, or snow, for the past three years.

No one has ever showed up. And that's suited him just fine.

If it weren't a term of his release, he would never even be in this part of town. It's almost suburban, populated with beige houses and chain stores in strip malls. Roads with no sidewalks and a five mile radius with more parks than bars.

He lives downtown, where the constant wail of traffic plays soundtrack to his sleep, where people keep their heads down and their minds on their own business, where anonymity is all but a guarantee, so long as you don't make a scene. 

Instead here he feels scrutinized, each time he gets out of the officer's unmarked car in the parking lot, each time it takes him a moment longer to get that damn doorknob loose and someone happens to walk by. When that happens, Ben feels the need to defend himself, to explain he was given the keys by the parish priest, to hide his tattooed wrists behind his back and hunch his shoulders to appear less threatening. 

He doesn't owe anyone anything. He doesn't owe anyone a smaller or less scary version of himself. But sometimes, in order to be left alone, you have to be seen as the person someone else wants to believe you are.

Ben's known that his entire life.

It's these thoughts he's lost in, staring at the wall where a dusty cartoon poster of Jesus hangs, when he hears someone delicately clear their throat.

Ben nearly jumps out of his skin, "Fuckin hell, you sneak in here or something?" He says reflexively.

He turns to see a thin brunette, shoulders tense and squared with muscle, her hair pulled back into a sloppy bun.

"You certain you should be speaking that way in a church, mate?" Her voice is as thin as she is, hard, and rounded by a British accent.

"I'm not here for God."

"No," she concurs, fiddling with a loose thread on her sweater, "no I figured you're not."

Ben clenches his jaw. "Why'd you figure that?"

She looks back up at him, narrows her eyes, blinks. "Way of the Light church? Thursdays? Seven p.m.?"

He blinks back. "You're here for the group?"

She shifts her weight. "Yep."

"You. Are here. For the group?"

His tone drips incredulity.

She sucks her teeth. "What, I don't look like someone who would belong here?"

He considers rushing to put together a defense for a moment, but at the last second, decides on honesty. "No. You don't." 

He doesn't know what he said, but her face flickers with hurt for a second, and Ben really, really regrets his honesty.

"Well," she says, so softly he almost can't hear her over the drone of the air conditioning, "not belonging is what got me in this situation in the first place. I'll go."

He should be fine with it. He should breathe a sigh of relief and go back to his hard-won ninety minutes of solitude. He should remind himself that the pain in her big hazel eyes isn't for him to resolve, that it isn't his business to ponder what her smile looks like, and he shouldn't be wondering about her story.

But instead, he calls, "Wait."

He hears her steps come to a stop in the hallway, but she doesn't return. He goes to meet her, turning the corner, only to stop short when he realizes how little distance she covered. She's barely beyond the doorway, and now, Ben's standing too close. They both take hasty steps backwards before he speaks.

"Of course you belong here. That's the whole idea. Now that we're back in the world, none of us have anywhere to belong, which is why this whole thing was set up in the first place."

She casts an angry glance at him, still unforgiving, but he takes another step back, pointing into the meeting room. "Come back in, just for a little bit."

Those big eyes dart around the hallway and then after a moment, she shakes her head.

"Come on," he says, and suddenly he realizes he can't do another six months of this alone. He wants someone to be there with him. 

Not _someone_. Her. This person about whom he knows nothing, whose presence he has known for barely a minute.

"We don't even have to talk. Just...hang out here for a little while. Maz, she's a member of the church, she makes the cookies in there. They're amazing."

A faint grin creeps onto her face, and Ben can see the whisper of a dimple. He wants to see it deep and creased when that grin is full blown.

"Fine," she mutters, and follows him back in. She piles four cookies onto a red paper napkin and takes a seat across the circle.

She seems to take his offer on its face. They don't speak. He might be willing to, if she started the conversation, but all the canned lines he learned during training seem ill-fitting, in this moment. 

When the clock hits eight-thirty, she wishes him a good night, flips her gray hood up, and takes long strides out of the room.

She crosses his mind all week, when he sees a woman on the subway with the exact same shade of brown hair, when he spots a package of red napkins at the market, when he pulls his own gray hoodie out from the laundromat dryer. Every time he feels a twinge, because he's sure he'll never see her again. 

The next Thursday, he leaves the basement briefly to take a call from his boss, and when he comes back, there she is. In the same seat, another napkin piled high with Maz's banana bread this time. 

He sits. Around a mouthful of food, and with crumbs on her fingertips, she goes right for the million dollar question.

"So why were you on death row?"

Despite the fact that he's been out for years, despite the fact that he knows he's never going back, the two tiny words still manage to make Ben's heart race and his palms sweat. 

He swallows it all down. "I killed my dad." He sees a flicker of something, maybe shock, in her eyes. He isn't finished. "And then I murdered the man who made me kill him."

After a moment, she nods. It's hard for Ben to remind himself, but this probably isn't the first time she's heard a story like this.

"You?" He inquires.

"I sorta killed my father too. My foster father." Her words from last week come back to him. _Not belonging is what got me here in the first place._ He nods like she did. 

When his eyes rise to hers, its with the sudden realization of equality between them. It was implied, before, but now it hangs heavy and obvious in the air.

The conversation ends there. The remaining forty minutes: silent. Ben watches through one of the long, skinny basement windows as she leaves, departing through the ground level side door, and before she can turn to the street, she runs a fingertip along the edge of the taped-up flyer.

_PEER TO PEER SUPPORT: FORMER LIFETIME INCARCERATION_

_For more information, call the number below to reach Poe Dameron of the Hoth District Attorney's office._

Ben wonders, if he were to wheedle and buy Poe some of that Swiss chocolate he likes, if he could get her name.

He may have taken the lives of two men and spend a decade believing he would die for it, but that doesn't mean he's not too scared to ask an angry, pretty woman for her name. 

\-------

_BEFORE_

_\-------_

The droning buzz of a locked door unlatching had become so familiar, Rey no longer noticed it.

The same with fluorescent lights, the feeling of linoleum floors underfoot, and the clang and echo of rooms utterly devoid of fabrics. No cloth chairs, no curtains on the windows, no carpet.

This time, though, as the door emitted its low vibration the sound grates on her nerves, makes her wince.

Perhaps because it's the last time she'll ever hear it.

She walks through, and an officer at a nearby desk proffers a large paper bag, the top rolled down. "Your effects," he mutters, and she takes the bag from him, eyes following his hand as he points to a bathroom. She takes a deep breath and nods.

For the first time in six years, _she_ is in control of the lock on the door. She savors the satisfying click as she turns the deadbolt and it snaps into place. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath of the antiseptic smell of the small space, then opens the bag, businesslike. 

She came here in 1996. Even then, her clothes weren't exactly the height of fashion. She wonders how much more out of style they've become since then. Thankfully it's nothing too trend-specific: her least ratty pair of jeans, a black blouse with puffed sleeves and a ruffled collar, and a blue blazer with almost nautical style, double breasted brass buttons. Her black sandals feel foreign, too thin and pliable, after endless days spent wearing thick white socks and lace-less sneakers. 

A glitter hair tie sits in the bottom of the bag, alongside her thin wallet, containing four dollars cash, her driver's license, and a copy of Plutt's membership card to the discount grocery store. She throws that one in the trash. 

She pulls half her hair back into a pony tail, carefully folds her navy blue jumpsuit into a neat square, and places her shoes on top, socks stuffed inside. 

When she reaches once again for the deadbolt, her hands are shaking.

An impossible scenario keeps running on loop through her mind. One where she opens the door, or wakes up on her cot, or turns the corner only to see someone in a drab suit with a grim, unsympathetic expression. "There's been an error," they say in her mind, or "Turns out we were wrong," some absurd explanation or bureaucratic loophole spilling from their mouth, at which point Rey is turned back, the bars are locked behind her once more, and the brief flame of hope she had for freedom is snuffed out, a thin wisp of smoke the only reminder it ever existed at all.

She opens the door. No drab suit. No grim face. Just that same officer, glancing up from his desk, and the one who escorted her here, looking expectant.

She crosses to the desk and hands back the empty bag, the clothes that are county property. The officer nods in acknowledgement but doesn't raise his eyes from some paperwork.

"Johnson?" Her escorting officer calls, and she drifts back over. "Ready?" The woman asks, and something in her tone causes Rey's eyes to dart up. Does Rey dare believe in the trace of kindness she sees there?

The officer goes to reach for her elbow, then retracts her hand at the last second. It's no longer needed. Rey could run, and they couldn't stop her.

She doesn't run. She walks, at the expected pace, out from the building and into the cold, clear sunlight of Illinois in March. 

There, on the other side of a chain link fence, with a beat-up car and a baby sleeping in a sling, are Finn and Rose. Rose's eyes are huge, filled with sadness and relief, and it takes about three seconds for two tears to spill over Rey's eyes and track down her cheeks. She shivers, pulls her arms closer into her body, and Rose rushes to the trunk of their car, retrieves a ratty blanket dotted with dried grass they probably use on picnics with the baby. 

Through that last chain link fence and Rey's in Finn's arms, trying to hug him around the baby's sling while Rose drapes the blanket over her shoulders.

Rey doesn't turn around to say goodbye. She doesn't need one last look; there's nothing poignant about spending another moment thinking about that place.

The winding road, through sparse woods dappled with sunlight, plunges Rey right into the landscape she always peered at, through the few windows or during her time in the yard. Rose turns away from the steering wheel for the briefest moment, offering a tiny, warm smile. "It's over." She says.

There's so much finality in her voice, Rey almost wants to believe her.

Drab suit. Grim face. This time, appearing at Rose and Finn's door. 

Rey takes a deep, tremulous breath.

\-------

The officers flanking Kylo on either side gripped his arms much tighter than necessary. He was getting out, it's not as though he would've been interested in fighting them. He peered through the next set of doors, squinting to recognize the face there, and as soon as they crossed the threshold, he nodded and mumbled, "Jinn."

His lawyer nodded solemnly back. He was a man of few words, even in the courtroom, and it was one of the things Kylo liked best about him. "Get changed. We've delayed as long as we can, but there are still some stragglers outside."

Kylo was unsure of what he meant, but he got taken to some sort of break room, maybe a rest area for the officers, the walls lined with ratty couches and a few coffee tables. Kylo looked around in confusion. "It's the only place besides the bathrooms that doesn't have cameras," Jinn explained, "And now that you're no longer one of them, they can't keep you in a place with involuntary surveillance." Kylo nodded, the door slid shut, and he changed quickly. 

Despite the poor quality of the food in there, finally quitting drugs helped him gain some weight back. Combine that with the reality of how little he had to do here, and as a consequence how many push ups he did, and his suit jacket barely fit. He'd be more annoyed, it was a custom fit from the Solo family atelier, but he doubted he'd have much need for such a nice outfit once he was out.

Jinn laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and guided him through a maze of remaining hallways. You didn't get out the same way you came in, so none of this is even vaguely familiar to him. 

Out in the parking lot, his mother and Artoo, their stalwart driver, stood near the town car. Closer than them, nearly pressed against the fence, were four reporters and two cameramen, who rushed to speak over each other as he got closer.

"Ren, Ren, how do you feel knowing you're finally free?"

"Do you plan to sue the state in civil court? Try to win some damages?"

"Do you credit your legal team with this victory, or do you feel you owe your gratitude to the DA?"

"Is there anything you wan to say to Snoke's remaining network? They're still out there!"

That last one almost gave him pause, and the cadence of his steps faltered, the tiniest bit. 

He said nothing. He trained his eyes on his mother, her windswept gray hair and stony expression, like a lighthouse in a storm. He never dreamed he'd be so happy to see her. 

When he got close enough to stand before her, she stared at him for a long time. He had no idea what to tell her, so he just waited, staring back. She raised one small hand and cupped his jaw for a moment, then said with all the weariness of a decade passed, "Let's go home, Ben."

He blinked at the use of his old name. Legally, he hadn't been that man for twelve years. He wondered if he should change it back. 

He slid into the car, after a brief but warm glance from Artoo. The windows were tinted dark, making any further photos or video all but impossible, for which he was grateful. "Jinn's meeting us at the house, Leia." Artoo intoned from the front seat.

Kylo closed his eyes, trying and failing not to picture the face of his father, as he sat in the man's own former seat in the car. Leia on the right, Han on the left, always. 

For a long time now, it had just been Leia on the right.

\-------

_NOW_

_\-------_

Rey doesn't know why she went. At Rose's urging, she supposes, urging that turned into badgering the longer she put it off. She thinks back on the day she agreed.

"I don't need support," she had insisted, as they both kneaded respective loaves of bread against the counter, Rose's daughter babbling in her high chair. "I have a good life. Things are moving along. I'm fine."

"It's been a year though," Rose says, stopping her work to look at Rey, waiting until her friend meets her gaze. "An entire year, and you haven't told me a single thing. And I know if you're not telling me anything, you're not telling anyone anything."

"I don't need to." Rey mumbles, rolling her dough into a perfect ball and placing it in a bowl, wetting a towel before draping it overtop. 

"Just go once," Rose says, her voice sure and serious, no plea in her tone. "If you hate it, or you don't like talking about it, or you don't connect with anyone there, I'll shut up. But just try it once."

Rey sighs, glancing over at the crumpled flyer Rose took from a train station pole and pinned up on her bulletin board. It's still got a crease in the middle, the bottom half of the paper tilted up and visibly gathering dust, it's been there so long.

She tries to imagine it. Other people like her. Talking about what she did, and what she didn't do. 

"Okay."

Rose smiles, and Rey never could resist that grin, so she finds herself smiling back, shaking her head and marveling at Rose's determination. "You never do give up, do you?" Rey's tone is wry.

"You know very well I don't." 

Rose turns away to fuss over the baby for a moment, adjusting her sweater and wiping some drool off her cheek. Rey closes her eyes and listens to their wordless cooing, back and forth, the language of mothers and their babies. 

She opens them to glance at the poster again, re-reading the address. 

Rey still might not be sure what led her to go, that first time. But she knows, very clearly, what kept her going back. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey comes back.

One week was all she agreed to. All she was obligated to fulfill.

But she didn't expect what she would find there.

 _Who_ she would find there.

Only one man. Alone. He seemed shocked she showed up, so she suspects it's been him alone for quite some time.

He doesn't do the best job of making her feel welcome. In fact, it's piss-poor.

She marches out, with every intention of detailing this experience for Rose as evidence that she tried, but she feels guilty, when she sees how desperate he is for her to stay. 

Rey stopped letting guilt rule her decisions a long time ago. She doesn't know why she makes an exception this time.

When she sits she immediately suspicious he's lying, that he will force her to talk. She assumes some hidden eagerness will emerge, determined to pry some details out of her.

Instead the silence stretches longer, and longer. And grows more comfortable as it does. By the end of the night it's almost nice, to sit there with nothing else on her mind, musing over whatever happens to land in her brain.

It's peaceful, being there with him. 

It's that peace which brings her back next week.

The peace...and the depths of the big, dark eyes across the room. The ones that oddly, unsettlingly, make _her_ want to pry some details out of _him_.

Rey never wants anything from anyone. It's how she protects herself. But this time, she spends all week wondering, musing over what he might have done, how he got convicted, why he was one of the lucky few to get exonerated. Is he a murderer? A rapist? Did he just attempt to do away with somebody, but it was gruesome enough that he got a life sentence anyway? Did he shoot up a school when he was a teenager, taking the lives of a few of his classmates and dooming himself to an unrealized adulthood behind bars? 

It can't be the last one, at least. For all the justice system's innumerable failings, they'd never convict the wrong guy for that.

_...Right?_

Maybe it's these questions running around in her head, that compel her to come back. Maybe it really is just the peace in that silent, musty basement.

Either way, she's eventually driven to speak. It's the first conversation she's initiated in probably three years.

She tries not to think about that.

He killed his dad. She doesn't voice her thoughts, about how desperate she was for a family, about how callous, how monstrous he must be to have taken the life of someone who helped raise him.

She shakes the thought out of her head. For a long time, the world thought that Plutt was the man who helped raise _her_. They thought he was good, well-intentioned, if a little rough around the edges. 

If there's anything that she learned in prison, it was that you rarely, if ever, knew the full story. And if that were true, she had no right to make a judgment.

Maybe it's wanting more of the story, that compels her to come back the third week.

Maybe it's those eyes again.

That week he seems less surprised to see her, but no less pleased. His eyes brighten, his posture straightens when she enters the room, and he gestures towards the cherry pie waiting on the side table. She takes a big piece, settles into her usual seat, and waits. She spoke first last time, now it's his turn. 

"So," he finally says, after two minutes of her near-silent chewing. "Is there anything you'd like to talk about?"

She finishes her bite, swallows, swings one ankle up onto her opposite knee and balances her plate on her folded leg. "Isn't that your job?"

His brow furrows and he tilts his chin down, some of his hair falling into his face. "What?"

"That's your job, right? To start the discussion, to help me work out what needs to be said?"

He blinks for a long time. "I," he shifts in his seat, making the reedy aluminum legs groan, "not really, actually. Most of the training is about how to respond. They sort of assume that the people who show up here are... people who will want to talk about it. Who are willing to be the first one to speak."

"Oh."

"So they didn't really prepare me for this situation." He justifies, hands landing back on his thighs, a little shrug of defeat taking the straight line out of his shoulders. 

"Don't think about the training." She insists, dragging the tines of her plastic fork through the lurid cherry jelly left on her paper plate. "Just...ask me what you would ask me. If we, you know, happened to meet, and both had this in common."

His eyes dart up, incredulous. "Like, what I would I say if I just happened to meet another former death row inmate say, on the train? Or in a coffee shop?" He smirks.

Rey just nods, wincing at the words she just said as they replay in her mind, but standing by them. He sighs, stares at her for a long moment, then glances over to that ancient Jesus poster he gazes at so often.

He debates starting out with something pithy, like asking her what her favorite snack was from the comm, or how well stocked the prison library may have been. Maybe something about her roommates over the years, or how it felt to put normal clothes on again, after years in the uniform. 

But something dark and strange compels him to cut right to the quick, and as soon as the question forms in his head, it's already on his tongue.

"Knowing everything you do now, would you still have done it?"

Her eyes rivet onto his, almost challenging him, questioning why he would grab and twist at the guts of the issue when there are a million other things he could have asked. But she seems to temper it, gather herself, much in the same way he was taught to control his own anger, then puts her plate down and crosses her legs the opposite way.

"Knowing I'd get out, eventually? Knowing the state wouldn't actually kill me?" He nods, his stomach twinging at the thought.

"Yes." Her tone is so certain, he doesn't need to ask for her reasons. She can surely see his desire to hear them, plain as day on his face. She breathes in, halts just before she speaks, then lets the words rush out on great gusts of air. "The person I killed was a very bad man. I...if I had known everything, not only would I have killed him, but- I probably should have done it sooner."

He assesses her for a moment, then nods. "You?"

"No." He says, barely before the single word is out of her mouth. "No." He repeats.

She's quiet for so long that he looks up at her again. It's like she was waiting for it. "But what you said before, it sounds to me like you killed a pretty bad man too. Aren't you glad he's gone?"

Ben clenches his jaw, shrugs. "There are fifty more equally bad men waiting to replace him. Someone surely has, by now. Worse, his replacement's probably dead, and that guy's replacement is in charge now. Remembering all the horrors of his predecessors, laying awake at night and wondering how he's going to top them."

She flares her nostrils, and he can see she has some comment to make, but she holds it back.

"What do you miss most about your dad?"

He twitches instantly. It's much too raw, much too deeply buried, to be laid out so plainly, like the bloody skin of an animal after a successful hunt. Yet Ben registers in his periphery her unflinching gaze.

He can't deny it.

"The knuckles." He finally mumbles, and she just furrows her brow to register her confusion. This woman is very good at waiting.

"He used to do this thing, every time I passed his chair on my way to the front door. He'd press his knuckles into my shoulder." Ben holds out a loose fist, knuckles towards her, and demonstrates against empty air. "Sometimes his fingers would stretch out, the middle part would brush against my arm." His hand drops, and he closes his eyes, conjuring up the sensation so easily, even after how long it's been. "It wasn't anything special, just...consistent. Predictable."

"Stable." She says, under her breath, almost to herself. Ben wants to agree, but something tells him he wasn't meant to hear that.

They talk of other things: favorite foods, movies in theaters. Oddly, she asks if he's seen the latest from Pixar, to which he replies no with a smile he tries desperately to stifle. 

He thinks about it, about her in the theater, with a bag of Milk Duds she smuggled in from home, the bright colors and crisp animation reflecting off her slightly upturned face.

It's how he survived solitary: dreaming up vivid scenes, imagining every sensory aspect of the moment. This time, he pictures how the back of her left shoe sticks to a long-dried soda spill; he imagines that vague, musty fabric smell of theater seats. 

He hears her tiny gasps when the plot turns, her near silent laugh, her eyes darting left and right to watch the families in little clusters, trading around big buckets of popcorn.

" _Ben_."

His eyes fly open. They're at the station, the commuter train waiting to take him to Lake Forest for the weekend. He glances over to the officer who just uttered his name, staring at him with a kind of quizzical fondness. 

"You drift off there for a minute, man?"

He shakes his head. "No, not sleeping, just...thinking."

The officer jerks her head towards the train. "Set to depart in five minutes. You should probably skedaddle."

He nods and offers a quiet thank you. He does sleep, a little, on the train ride.

The house isn't far from the station, and it's a decent day, so he walks. Leia's learned that if she doesn't hear from him, it doesn't always mean something's wrong, so when she looks up from the kitchen window to see him loping up the drive, she just raises one yellow-gloved hand in a short wave and he does it back. A faint trace of a smile and she's looking down again, into the sudsy water and dishes Ben imagines there.

He climbs the back stairs to the house around dinner time, and finds Leia already plating up meatloaf and roasted carrots. He puts on one of Han's old comedy records, settles into his seat at the far end of the dining room table, and digs in.

They chuckle often. Soft, soundless laughs under their breath as they eat. A few times, they've heard a good enough joke that Leia had to spit and cough into her napkin, which Ben might feel bad about if not for the lightness of joy in her eyes. 

After dinner, they work their way silently through a game of Scrabble, and Ben clinches the victory with "panacea." 

"Never should have let you do all those AP classes," Leia drawls at her defeat.

"Let?" He repeats, incredulous. "You insisted."

She tips her head back as though deciding whether or not to disagree with him, and he smirks, putting the tiles back in the red velvet bag then flattening it til the lid will go back on the game box.

There's no blueprint for how to rebuild a relationship after you've killed your father, and all things considered, he thinks they're doing okay.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double update today! Hope you enjoy :)
> 
> TW: Brief mention of a background character's suicide, and a very vague reference to some child abuse happening in the foster system. Also a short, moderately violent description of how Rey kills Plutt.

When he lies in bed that night, he thinks of her. He knows he shouldn't. But in the dark, away from other people and other things, he admits it to himself. That he's drawn to her, in a way that supersedes their shared experiences.

He never thought about women when he was on the inside. Not once. He'd hear the other inmates bragging about pictures their girlfriends had sent them, recounting stories of the women they'd slept with before they got locked up. Ben certainly never spoke, and hardly ever listened. These guys were only alone because they'd been imprisoned.

Ben had always been alone. Never a partner, or a steady girlfriend, or even more than a date. A few awkward fumbles in the back of his car, or end-of-the-night porch kisses, but by the time he was old enough for anything real to develop, he was already trapped, already shrouded in a world of crime and lies and every move had potentially deadly consequences. From that life he went straight to prison.

This is the first time since his release that he can remember thinking about a woman as anything different from any other person. He's not sure if he likes it or if it frightens him, for thoughts that were so long suppressed to suddenly be pushed to the forefront of his mind. He wonders what books she likes, what she cooks for herself, what she wears to sleep at night. 

He sighs.

He's her _support group leader_. It's a moral line he is honor-bound not to cross. He may have been acquitted of murder, but the terms of his parole for the other charges stipulate that he must contribute 300 hours to leading the discussion group, and he's pretty confident sleeping with a group member is frowned upon.

The _only_ other group member. 

Nonetheless, he slides a box of Swiss chocolates across the desk at his next quarterly meeting with Dameron.

The man's dark eyes stare down at the mountain scene printed on the box. the flowing silver script reflecting light from his office window.

"I assume this box represents one half of a quid pro quo." He says plainly, shuffling some papers back into a file then focusing his attention on Ben. 

Ben nods. "This is the quid."

"What's the quo?"

Ben takes a breath, still utterly unsure how this will be received. "What do you know about the woman who's started showing up to Group?"

Dameron goes still, staring at him. "You do realize how inappropriate this request is?"

Ben's nodding immediately. "Of course I do."

"Going to Group but remaining anonymous is something she's welcome to do. That's her choice."

"Yes."

"If there was something she wanted you to know, she would tell you."

"Right."

"So," he waves a hand, "if you understand all that, why are you still asking me?"

Ben shrugs, shifts his feet, knowing this is the answer that will make or break the conversation. "She makes me wonder, Poe." He says it quietly, and sees Dameron's face soften in response. "About who she is, what she likes to do, what she does with her time. I've never really wondered those things about...anyone."

Ben sighs. "You know me. I'm not a creep, not mentally unwell. I've never victimized a woman and don't plan to. But she's not always easy to talk to, so I just. Wanted to try a different way, I guess. To learn a little more."

Poe spends a long moment assessing him, but he either witnesses or just chooses to believe in Ben's pure intentions, because a weathered hand extends onto the desk and pulls in that box of chocolates. Ben exhales slowly. 

"Rey Niima. Arrested at sixteen, went in at nineteen. Killed her foster parent. Piece of shit guy, should have been caught by the system a dozen times. Kids were constantly running away, some with injuries, asking to be rehomed." Ben's stomach twists. "You'd think that would have been enough to get her a plea deal for manslaughter, but her public attorney was a nightmare. The judge who chose her sentence hanged himself a few years back, and they found out later on he'd taken bribes for maybe a dozen cases. That foster father had powerful, shady friends out in Urbana. The exact type to offer that sort of bribe." Poe sighs, and Ben grits his teeth, then watches as Dameron flips open the box. He must have the type and layout of the chocolates memorized, because a sure hand goes straight for a round bonbon in the top left corner. "The entire system was stacked against her. No resources, no guidance. She got eviscerated in cross examination." Ben clenches one hand into a fist, picturing Rey's tanned, angular face a few years younger: less sun and more roundness in her cheeks, still soft from youth despite the hand fate had dealt her. He pictures her attempt at a respectable hairstyle, wisps falling out of it, as she sits hunched in the box, surrounded by gleaming stained wood, mumbling answers to the prosecutors' questions.

"How'd she do it?" Ben asks lowly, staring at the floor, but when he gets no response, he looks up to find Poe squinting, as though in bright sunlight, looking over at the wall. Poe must sense his gaze in his periphery. "I think I've told you enough for today. Anything else you want to talk about with Group?"

"No. Besides her, nothing with Group has changed."

Poe nods. "Then in that case, we're done for today."

 _Ray_ , Ben thinks on the train ride home, an unusual name for a woman. Maybe it's short for something, Rachel or Rayna. Maybe it's a new name she chose after she got released, and at birth she'd been a Miranda or a Caitlin. He finds that after his conversation with Poe he's only ended up with more questions than answers, an even wider chasm of things he wants to know.

He wonders how, if ever, he'll find the answers.

\-------

Two weeks later, at his mother's again, after dinner's been eaten and the dishes washed, he's trying to get interested in a hockey game when the idea hits him so suddenly, he physically reels back. 

Google.

When he first got arrested, internet searching wasn't a thing. There were online encyclopedias and government sites, message boards and chat rooms, but every local news station and coffee shop didn't have a website. Social media was limited to fan club sites and singles pages, as it mostly still is.

The nascent internet went through its adolescence while he was on the inside, and sometimes, he still forgets the ways it has changed.

He fires up the Macintosh iBook his mom got him when he got released. It has sat in the corner, dusty and dark, for months: he usually uses it as the designated place to keep his unopened mail. 

But tonight the fluorescent screen finally serves it's purpose, as he navigates to Google's homepage. The colorful letters seem to stare right at him:

_"Well, dude? What? What do you want to know?"_

He feels nervous, as though the mere act of thinking her name might cause her to manifest in the room, appearing in the corner in a puff of smoke to accuse him of being weird and crossing the line.

But as he begins to type, there is no puff of smoke. No finger pointed in his direction, no one to watch, no one to judge.

Just him, and the tantalizing promise of answers on the other side of the Enter key. 

He gets twelve million results when he searches **Ray Johnson.** He didn't even know that many pages on the internet existed.

Pages for real estate agents and insurance brokers, a few that promise information about arrest records, but those all prove to be middle aged men, and in order to search more specifically, the websites ask him to pay. He's not even sure the information would be helpful: after all, he already knows she was convicted of murder.

He's on page six of the results, just about to give up and slam the laptop shut, when a box on the right side catches his eye.

"Search results too broad? Try adding additional search terms to narrow them down. Use _**minus:**_ to exclude certain types of results, such as "italian food minus:pasta."

Ben blinks for a moment, rifling through his conversation with Dameron, and every earlier one he'd had with Ray herself. 

He clears the search bar, and settles on this: **Ray Johnson murder Urbana**

"Did you mean ' _Rey Johnson murder Urbana?'"_ Google asks him. He clicks on the correction and blows out a breath through his nose.

Three hundred and sixty results. This he can manage.

The first page is a local news story, KSTW, and he's forced to click out of some stupid pop-up ad for their morning show before it will let him reach the text.

He learns that it was her sixth placement since she was taken into the system at age eight. He learns that there were four other children in the home, if _home_ is even something they can call it. At sixteen she was sharing a room with two other kids age nine and five. Ben remembers himself at sixteen, intensely private and perpetually anxious, and wonders how much harder it might have been if he hadn't had a space to call his own.

He wonders if she ever even had the luxury of becoming anxious, about grades and social life and personal identity, or if she was too busy trying to stay safe and stay alive.

He reads a quote of her testimony, that she took punches and slaps to protect the younger kids, that she put a lock on their door and eventually moved the other two kids into her room as well.

He learns of a distant relative, tracking her down after a decade and sending what meager checks they could afford.

They were kept secret, hidden from her and spent on liquor or horse races by the man legally designated as her guardian.

And he learns of the argument that erupted when she found out. Her testimony tells of holes in her winter coat and using friends' lip balm on her the wind-chapped skin of her hands because she had no pocket money for lotion, yet hundreds of dollars, that should have been spent for her well being, were stolen.

The argument escalated. Her guardian got violent, which was nothing new. But this time as she yelled, she lashed out, after nearly a decade of neglect.

He had his hands around her neck long enough that her vision began to spot, she testified. She was dizzy, coughing, gasping for breath when she fell against the wall in the garage, heard him coming up behind her, and blindly grabbed for a tool hung on a nearby hook.

It was a flathead screwdriver. It was plunged into his abdomen five times, deeply, and after, his blood ran through a crack in the concrete under the garage door, down the driveway, and mixed with someone's sprinkler runoff into the gutter. A thin line of evidence it would be near-impossible to hide. 

She called the police herself. He imagines she expected mercy.

The article doesn't really take a stance on her innocence or guilt, just reports the facts of her recent testimony and the status of, what was at the time, an ongoing trial. The journalist does take a moment to note that due to her age and the surrounding circumstances, they expect a lighter sentence.

A link to a follow up story from eighteen months later lists her getting the death penalty. A significant portion of her testimony was apparently cast into doubt by other witnesses, ruining her credibility, and any sympathy that might have garnered less time on the inside. 

He can only find one account of her exoneration, and it's scant at best. A true crime blogger in Portland describes her case being taken up by the Illinois chapter of the Juvenile Justice Coalition, the discovery that two of her jurors had connections to the foster system, as well as mounting evidence that her court-appointed attorney was not properly licensed, and the judge had been paid off.

It was enough to grant her a retrial. From there, he can't find any more information. Only that she got free. And that now she's a victim's advocate. There's a tiny, grainy photo of her listed on the staff page of the Midwest Coalition for Wrongful Conviction. The bio is spare: describing that she, too, was wrongfully convicted and works to prevent others from becoming the same.

He slumps back on the couch, sated. Not that he doesn't have more questions, but seemingly none the computer can resolve.

He worries, as he lies in bed that night. What if Poe is overcome by guilt and tells her what Ben asked? What if she realizes he's actually a pretty shitty group leader and decides never to come back? 

What if none of that happens: what if Poe says nothing, and she keeps showing up, and...she just doesn't _like_ him?

It's that thought which has him sharply rolling over in bed, only for his legs to get wrapped too tightly in the sheets, which he kicks away. 

Ben's never been good at making friends. No one is after prison, he wagers. Most people who killed their dads aren't. It was probably his chronic inability to form normal connections that led him to Snoke in the first place.

He knows he should feel more alarmed, therefore, by how drawn he is to Rey. He knows he should question it. 

But instead, he's sliding towards it. It started with buying that damn box of chocolates and now it's here, with him and the barely-used laptop in the dark, casting a gray glow onto his face as he stares at her grainy photo and compares it to the visage in his mind. 

He wonders what shows she likes. What her favorite drink is. The strangest dream she's recently had. How she stores her shoes at home. In a haphazard pile by the door? On a rack? In an even more shameful pile at the back of her closet?

Thinking about a woman in this way makes him feel normal. Like an ordinary man with an ordinary crush: the kind of guy who plays fantasy football and goes to happy hour, who notices the new girl working in Accounting and fidgets when she walks by his cubicle.

He convinces himself that's what he's chasing; not her, but just this feeling of normalcy.

He's always been a little too good at twisting the truth to serve his own aims.

\-------

"Sara, can you grab a pack of napkins for me and throw them in the cart?"

She looks up from where she's reading the back of the paper towel packaging to see Rey navigating the cart with her right hand, carrying Lilly in the other while John follows behind. 

It doesn't surprise Rey in the least that she was distracted. That girl would be fascinated by the phone book. 

"Sure," she says quietly, and without being prompted, selects the Easter napkins, printed with colorful eggs, that are on clearance. Then she takes over the cart, slender hands wrapping around the handle just as Rey lets go.

"Thanks," Rey says, blowing a breath out and shifting Lilly to her other hip. It's only six thirty, but Rey should have known as soon as they ate dinner, her youngest would be checked out for the night.

"Don't forget we need more mac and cheese," John pipes up from where he stands at the end of the aisle, glancing around at the other shoppers. 

"Leave it to him to only remember the food," Sarah mumbles under her breath, and Rey huffs a laugh, watching as Sara tries to maintain her look of annoyance and fight a smile. Rey reaches out and wedges two fingers in her armpit though, getting just enough of a tickle in to trigger a hysterical yelp, after which Sara's big, wide smile is on full display, eyes crinkled shut as she darts away.

"Lead the way, Johnny," Rey calls out, and he waits for the rest of them to reach the end of the aisle before turning towards the grocery section.

She glances over as they pass aisle four. "You two go on ahead, we need tomato sauce and some beans, I'll meet you in th-"

"Rey?"

She freezes.

She knows that voice. She's only heard it on a few occasions. But it sounds so different from any other she's ever heard, it's only natural that it would have stuck with her. 

She turns, sleeping child still on her shoulder, and there he is. 

He looks a little different than he does on Thursday nights. His hair is parted to the side, he's wearing a button up and slacks, and there's a stack of manila folders under one arm. She can see a laminate ID card poking fractionally out of his shirt pocket. He's got glasses on.

"Ben." She says evenly, and she feels a weird twist in her gut. 

He just stands there, looking like he might have regretted saying her name, and she doesn't know whether to let him off the hook and simply wish him a good evening, or what. 

Lily takes that moment to make it known she's woken up.

"Who dis, mommy?" 

Ben blinks, as though startled to be reminded that children can speak, and Rey tilts her neck awkwardly to look down at the girl whose pinkie is now shoved into one side of her mouth. "This is my friend Ben, honey."

Lily looks over, eyeing him carefully, then mumbles. "Hi."

"Hi?" He responds, still bewildered, and his free hand reaches over to fidget with the edges of his folders.

"You work here?" Rey asks glancing around the store. 

"I work in the regional office," he says, gesturing over his shoulder to a white set of doors that read EMPLOYEES ONLY. "I'm just here to see how a new inventory tracking system is working." 

"Oh, cool," Rey offers unhelpfully, and can't think of a single thing interesting to say, "is it?"

"Is what?" Ben says, blinking at her, tilting his head in this way he's done before.

"Is it? The new system...working?"

"Oh," he says, and his pallor is exchanged for a deep flush as his cheeks pink. Rey tries to hide her amusement but he must see it, because he grins the tiniest bit. "It's...sort of. Optimizing the system for each new store takes time, because different products sell out at different rates based on location and customer demography."

"Right," Rey nods, as though that's an idea she's even once considered.

"So," he says, shifting on his feet, then moving a little closer so he's no longer standing in the very middle of the aisle, forcing people and their red carts to move around him, "what brings you to Target on this fine Monday night?"

"Just a monthly stock up," she explains, "I had a bunch of coupons that were about to expire."

"Ah, smart." His free hand shifts again, this time sliding into his pocket. She can see the movement of his fingers inside, still fidgeting.

"I hope since I'm not paying full price, I'm not like, taking away from your salary or whatever." She tries lamely, pulling one half of her mouth up to demonstrate the jest, and she's shocked when he actually chuckles, low and dry, a rusty sound like an old accordion.

"I'm not concerned, you're good." She smiles at his forgiveness and they stand there for another tense moment, Lily's round brown eyes darting between them. 

"So, you have kids?" He says, and Rey feels that weird twist in her gut again. Before she can answer, John's messy head of hair pokes out from three aisles down. 

"Rey, do you want us to buy the organic one again? With the rabbit? Cuz Kraft is on sale."

She turns back to Ben, the answer to his question all the more obvious now, then turns John's way again. "Kraft is fine, Johnny. But get two boxes of the white cheddar kind, that's the only one Aunt Rose likes."

His head disappears, and Rey turns back. She cups one hand over Lily's ear. "Foster mom. I have three kids. John's already adopted," she nods her head down to the one in her arms, "Lily and her older sister Sara are with me right now too."

He nods, "Wow, I-" he shrugs, going to lean against the display nearest him before realizing his shoulder doesn't line up with a shelf, and the stacked display of maraschino cherries probably couldn't withstand his weight, "you never mentioned that."

She shrugs. "We don't actually know each other that well." She immediately winces at her own candor, listening to her own internal echo of _that doesn't mean I don't want to_ , but blessedly she doesn't verbalize it.

"That's true." 

"Sorry, that sounded rude, I just mea-"

"No, no, it's fine," he insists, stretching one hand out in a gentle gesture, "you're right. We haven't...talked much, in the time you've been coming to group."

Rey nods, tightening her jaw. 

Before she can excuse herself, the older two are rattling up with the cart, the requisite mac and cheese boxes sliding around next to a box of mini brownies Sara evidently thinks she wouldn't notice. 

"I'm John," he says before Rey can introduce him, holding one small hand out to Ben. He has to reach nearly over his own head to get within handshake-range, but Ben very graciously bends his knees as their hands meet.

"Nice to meet you John, I'm Ben." 

"How do you know Rey?"

The kids do not know Rey was ever in jail. She holds her breath as she watches Ben grasp for an answer, but he's been paying attention, because the lie flows out of him like water.

"I know your Aunt...Rose, she introduced us." His eyes dart up, and Rey tries to hide her smile at the fib.

"Oh. Rose never talks about you." John says, deadpan, and Rey reaches out for his shoulder.

"That's not a very nice thing to say, Johnny." she scolds, and the boy lifts both hands to elbow height. 

"What? I'm just telling the truth. I've never heard of him before." 

"I know that. But sometimes we keep the truth to ourselves so that we don't hurt someone's feelings. Do you think hearing that Aunt Rose never talks about him made Ben feel important?"

"No."

"Did it make him feel appreciated?"

"Probably not."

"Then was it something you needed to keep to yourself?"

"Probably yes."

"Good job, honey."

He turns back to Ben. "Sorry I said that."

"That's okay. Thanks for the apology."

"You should hang out with Aunt Rose more. You seem cool."

Ben really, really laughs. It's maybe the first time Rey's really seen his teeth. "What makes you say that?"

"You're tall." John states, as though it's obvious. "And you've got a cool watch."

Ben laughs again, louder this time, and Rey relishes the way it unwinds the tension from his huge frame. 

"Well thanks, dude." Ben reaches out to offer John a fist bump, which John turns into an explosion as they pull apart, complete with sound effects. 

As usual, Sara's a few feet off, standing behind the cart, just watching. "You must be Sara."

"Yep. Hi." She gives Ben a tiny wave.

"Nice to meet you."

"You too." 

It's more words than Rey's maybe ever heard Sara say to a stranger. She grins, lifts Lily into the child seat on the cart, and takes over the handle. 

"We've gotta get going, but it was nice running into you." She says, just as Lily starts to whine about wanting to go to bed, and Rey smooths a hand over her hair. 

"You too," Ben says, as John is busy sliding onto the palette shelf underneath the main basket of the cart. Sara's wandering towards the electronics section. "Will I-" he stops short, and Rey stops the cart from where she had just been starting to pull away. "See you Thursday night?"

She turns back, Lily tugging on her sleeve and Sara drifting further away, but takes a second to look him right in the eyes, something she's barely done this entire time.

"I'll be there."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends :) This chapter was a real challenge to write. End Notes tell you more about why.

The flickering light outside of the kids' room freaked John out, so he pushed open Rey's bedroom door at one AM, trying not to cry, but explaining that the monster made the light go on and off again, or something to that effect. Rey was only barely awake enough to hear. So she flipped the covers back on the free side of her double bed and he climbed in. 

He's passed out now, his slow breathing loud because the kid can only breathe through his mouth when he sleeps, which the dentist has assured Rey is normal.

She, of course, is wired now, staring out at the non-blinking streetlamp out her own window, setting the budding branches of a crepe myrtle tree under a golden glow.

She promised herself she wouldn't do this. But as she begins to peel back the blankets once more, she never tried to stop herself.

She slides out of bed and into the great room. The open, arched doorway combines the kitchen and living room all into one. Shoved into a corner, along with her gray metal filing cabinet and worn backpack, is her ancient PC atop the desk. She slides out the retracting tray, placing one hand atop the keyboard, and jiggles the mouse.

By the time she has the internet booted up, a few more moments have passed.

She still doesn't stop herself.

Glancing down at her purple nail polish, she types only with her index fingers. There was a name for that. _Hunt and Peck,_ one of the lawyers at MidCo had called it, and told her there was a typing course offered at Northwestern if she wanted to enroll. She looked it up. It was five hundred dollars.

The search results for "Ben murder father Chicago" finally load, and the first article is a story from the Vanity Fair. 

Lily wails from the kids' bedroom, and Rey is on her feet within a second, dashing to pull the baby into her arms before she can wake the others. By the time Rey's alarm goes off at 6:30, Sara's the only kid still in her own bed. 

Rey gets the older two dressed and on the bus to school. It's the final week of the year and they're getting antsy, eager for summer and day camps and sleeping in. Rey walks Lily to daycare, and delivers her to the warm smile and frizzy purple hair of Amilyn, whose daycare accepts Rey's government-assisted payments and leaves her with six hours a day to do an eight-hour job. 

Compared to the other jobs she's had, it feels like a luxury. 

When she returns home, the first thing she does is shuck off her jeans and pull her pajama pants back on. Then she sips from her second cup of coffee, scanning today's page in her planner. She has several defense attorneys whose emails require carefully researched responses, and she has to finalize the arrangements for a talk she's giving in Winnetka next month. She sighs and jiggles her mouse.

The same window appears on the screen. The search results; the article. For some reason it startles her, enough that she sets down her coffee gingerly, amazed she didn't spill any as she flinched. 

She grits her teeth. She no longer has the excuse that it was a sleepless moment of weakness, in the middle of the night, having just run into him and feeling curious.

She clicks that first link anyway.

\-------

**THE FREEING OF KYLO REN:**   
**WHAT A CASE OF MODERN DAY PATRICIDE CAN TEACH US ABOUT DRUGS, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN FAMILY**

By Juana Stanton

  
_Without sounding too trite, or too dramatic, it must be said that the life of Ben Solo has played out like a Greek tragedy._

_A boy raised in incredible wealth, corrupted in his youth by a sinister mastermind, driven to the brink of sanity, to the point that he killed his father, only to avenge his death by slaughtering the very man at the root of Solo's corruption. A lifetime conviction, then a web of lies and criminal enterprise uncovered, and as a result, a gubernatorial pardon._

_Hollywood couldn't have written a better script._

_And yet for all the sensational details of his life, the juicy bits ought not to be our focus. While discussion of his fake name, forced drug addiction and legacy of violence are the type of headlines that have kept readers coming back, they are not what keep me awake at night, thinking about the story of Ben Solo and the man some claim he chose to become._

_Instead it's things that are much simpler, yet vastly more complicated. Endemic government mismanagement, the inconsistency of the courts, and the importance of familial forgiveness are what keep me coming back, to the months of notes I have taken on this case. Allow me to tell you my story of Ben Solo, and then, allow me to tell you why it really matters._

_The stage was set the day his grandmother, Padme Amidala, died. She slipped away after spending the second half of her pregnancy holed up in a Maryland mansion at the insistence of her increasingly paranoid husband, right-wing political strategist Anakin Skywalker. Amidala was reportedly malnourished and in a state of frantic anxiety when she passed, mere days after she gave birth to twins._

_At the request of state government officials, the Maryland Bureau of Investigation opened an inquest into her death. Court documents are still sealed, and so the exact proceedings remain unknown, but the inquest's findings led to the children being removed, separated, and placed in protective custody. For Luke, their son, that meant a life in Iowa on a relative's corn farm. For Ben Solo's mother Leia, it meant a life overseas, under the care of diplomats only distantly acquainted with her mother._

_No charges were ever brought against Anakin Skywalker, despite what many say was direct responsibility for her neglectful death. In the later years of his work with the Palpatine administration, he is said to have grown increasingly paranoid and erratic. His staff recall conversations about national security that were entirely centered on whether or not they would put Skywalker himself in greater danger. Attempts to call attention to his changing mental state were met with outrage and at times, dismissal from their positions, so the staff learned to control his behavior rather than fight it._

_Decades later, Luke was contacted by a former colleague of his father's, Oberon Kenobi, a sociologist and climate activist who spent much of his career fighting against Anakin's policies._

_As a child, this would have been a violation of the legal agreement intended to keep Luke Skywalker from harm, but as adults, protective measures could no longer be enforced over Padme and Anakin's children. Anakin had faded into obscurity, living alone in a remove part northern Florida with few neighbors who knew of his past. Yet suddenly he burst back on to the political scene, as a war hawk advising the rising authoritarian movement on international relations. When Palpatine was elected to an unprecedented third term later after years out of the political realm, there was Skywalker in the shadows; members of the administration say he was still firmly in the throes of mental illness._

_Some say Luke Skywalker was brainwashed by Kenobi. Others say he was finally shown the truth, and sought to correct the horrific path his father had chosen in life._

_Either way, at twenty-two years old, Luke spent six months in the spotlight, seeming groomed by Palpatine's administration to take on an appointed position, some have speculated within the Office of the Inspector General._

_He didn't. Instead, after a night of particularly heated arguments at the White House, Luke Skywalker tried to kill his father._

_Or so we think. Like so many elements of the Skywalkers' family history, this chapter is shrouded in uncertainty._

_Did Luke Skywalker want to kill his dad that day? Or was he there to kill Palpatine, trying to release the hold a powerful manipulator had over a mentally infirm Anakin?_

_The evidence is messy because only one eyewitness account exists from that night: Luke's. By midnight, a President and his closest advisor were dead._

_Luke Skywalker's acquittal is consistently considered one of the most shocking verdicts of the century. It dominated cable news coverage and divided communities for weeks._

_He went onto join the Jesuit order, and has not been seen or heard from in decades._

_This was the legacy into which Ben Solo was born. It always made me wonder: was Ben Solo always destined to end up in the mire of corruption, crime and madness? Did some cocktail of genetics and generational trauma twist his fate into what it has become?_

_No explanation can ever suffice. It was in early high school that he met Sanford Snoke, a venture capitalist repeatedly convicted of tax fraud and just as often accused of war profiteering, and of supporting the private militias which are now our greatest domestic terrorism threat, according to Homeland Security._

_Ben Solo rose through the ranks of Snoke's shady enterprise under the_ nom de guerre _Kylo Ren. He went from dealing cocaine to trafficking arms across state lines, until he was managing offshore accounts and ordering bribes, hits, and warnings, all with his boss' blessing._

_But things didn't end well for one of the most powerful criminals in Chicago's history._

_Within three years of barely graduating high school,_ _Ben Solo was facing a murder charge,_ _just like his uncle before him. Again, for ending the reign of a seemingly tyrranical man whose influence caused untold suffering to its victim, and to this entire family._

_But that is where the parallels stop. Ben Solo was not acquitted._

_There was a sentencing hearing in a breathless, packed courtroom. I sat in the gallery and watched as Ben Solo was mandated to die._

_He spent nearly seven years on death row, while legal challenges to the humanity of lethal injection remained stalled in the courts._

_But then, Luke Skywalker returned._

_We soon learned his life had been spent in a remote, self-sufficient monastery in northern Montana. It is one of few ways obscurity could be achieved after he became one of the most recognizable faces in the country._

_The law had spared Luke Skywalker. And now, he was relentless, determined, to spare his nephew._ _Luke's exhaustive -and at times questionably legal- efforts uncovered new exculpatory evidence, including CCTV footage and fraudulent prescription records. It was enough to get his nephew a new trial._

 _On a bright but bracing cold day in February, the defense described how Sanford Snoke had been consistently drugging his protege's food and drinks, even tampering with his cigarettes, likely since Ben Solo was seventeen. The drug was_ Steladol _, which, when laced with trace amounts of lysergic acid, the active ingredient in LSD, is known to induce paranoia, extreme anxiety, suggestability, and remove inhibition._

_"Steladol is highly controlled, produced in minute quantities and distributed in fractional batches to Level 1 trauma centers," says Dr. Monique Mothma, neurologist, professor, and president of Northwestern Hospital. "Its power is well understood by all who manufacture and administer it. And after our national disaster regarding the distribution of opioids, it was understood that we could not allow such a disaster to occur again. The system regulating it is airtight."_

_There was a pause, here, in her commentary._

_"Or, nearly so." She added with a slight grimace, a glimmer of something regretful in her placid expression. "The fact that this individual was able to obtain some, to use it outside of an acute medical setting, speaks to what must be an incredible level of resources and influence, in my opinion."_

_Dr. Mothma failed to realize how right she really is. Snoke's criminal enterprise was valued at nearly two billion dollars after his death, and despite the efforts of some of his most trusted cretins, the organization was never able to hold together after their leader's violent end._

_Was it the Steladol? The haunting familial history of manipulation and murder? The hatred of fathers that seems to float in the Skywalker's blood?_

_What made Ben Solo kill his father that day? And why was the act itself the tipping point, the last straw that led him to taking a second life before he walked into a police station, bloodied and only 150 pounds, and admit to everything?_

_I could spend hours, weeks, months trying to explain it all. And I have. My theories change, my supporting evidence gets shuffled around. But what remains is this:_

_Ben's mother._

_Leia Organa has given just one interview in her entire life, when her son's new trial was announced. She evaded questions about her husband, her brother, her parents, and instead had this to say:_

"[Fighting for her son's retrial] has taught me a few things. How many people within the judicial system were amenable to bribes, which I refused to give. How many people with a modicum of power didn't care to help me. The extent to which we continue to ignore the reality that in a city and a country rife with weapons, drugs, and an unchecked desire for profit, bad people will find a way to do what they want and will commit the violence to see it through. How do you think Snoke was ever able to become so wealthy? Of course others will get sucked into that vortex along the way. Of course my son is the tip of the iceberg. What about the kids whose parents don't have all this time to advocate for them? Most don't have an uncle who comes to save the day. Most are prevented from this second chance at justice because of their race, or their socioeconomic status, or because someone else pays those bribes and they can't. Everyone always asks me if I forgive my son, and I do. I'll finally go on the record saying that I do. I don't forgive the local and state government that let a three-time convicted felon continue to run a criminal empire. I don't forgive the investigators who may have knowingly suppressed evidence my brother was able to find. I don't forgive the state for inadequately investigating the wellness checks I called in on my son. I've read their reports. It was clear something was wrong, he looked horribly ill during that time. That's why my husband finally went to see him, and then Han never came home. No one, in a position of power, would help. Wellness checks are what failed my mother, too, you know. She wasted away in that house while my father slowly killed her. Lots of people knew."

_Leia closed this interview with a statement that crosses my mind at least once a day. It's made me question democracy, civil liberties, and the hollow American exceptionalism born from them. The quote is this:_

"Do I want to live in such a free society when much of the freedom is given to people who abuse it?" 

_Make of that what you will. Think of it the next time you're on the train, or waiting for your dry cleaning or your coffee._

_Freedom gives most of us the chance to be who we are, to do what we want. But freedom let Sanford Snoke continue to be a monster, to put Ben Solo in a cage, before our moral and legal ideals put Solo in another one._

_Much like those ancient Greek dramas, the story of Kylo Ren leaves us with a sense of catharsis, but a familiar dread, that this may not be the last sad story we watch._

\--

Rey feels physically thrown back in her chair.

Her eyes stare, unseeing, at the computer screen. She feels oddly exposed, like she might look over her shoulder to see him watching her with hard, accusing eyes. Judging her for seeking secrets he did not yet choose to tell. 

_Are they secrets, though?_ She glances up to a crack in the wall, considering. The article certainly gives the impression that everything known about him is a matter of public record. 

But that still doesn't mean he would want her to read it. 

She knows she's meant to be getting work done, but she doesn't even try to focus on anything else.

It's only the shrill ring of the telephone, and Rose's voice down the line, that breaks her from everything she's wondering.

\--

She keeps showing up to group.

They talk about her kids, what little she knows about their lives before. Lily and Sara's mom tried to make an effort: arranging visit dates and telling their case manager about her progress finding a job and steady housing. But she never showed up to those visits, Rey and the girls spending hours in the park waiting. Something always fell through with the job or the apartment. Rey knew she was struggling, and in a way she was grateful she never showed up, so that the girls never had to attach to a doomed sense of hope. 

Rey never told them that they were waiting for someone, on those visit days. Instead it was simply a girls day to the park, or to get ice cream. They were young. They hadn't yet developed suspicion. That was a few years ago, and now, Rey's not sure she would be able to pull the same tricks on Sara if she tried.

And John, Ben asks? 

Renounced all parental rights, Rey explains. As soon as they hit their 1-year mark of fostering, she submitted the paperwork for formal adoption. His last name was changed, he started calling her "mom" sometimes, and the first night it was official, they sat at the kitchen table and ate a thickly frosted cake until their teeth turned blue.

Ben grinned at that. He listened intently, the entire time she rambled. She feels weird talking for so long. She isn't sure she has, not like this, about a topic that isn't judicial precedent or bail reform. But she reasons with herself that he wouldn't ask if he didn't care, so she talks. 

She shreds her green paper napkin and drops the pieces onto her plate. Ben watches her methodical progress, eyes tracing the journey of her hands away from her lap and over the plate. 

When the last piece of jagged, thin paper has been dropped she finally looks up at him. 

It's the first time she's met his eye all afternoon. 

His gaze is like the sound of a raw steak being dropped into a pan, and the feel of it on her makes her feel approximately as hot. An apology for blathering is sitting on the top of her tongue, but she forces it down.

"Do you want to come to dinner?"

The heat evaporates from his gaze as he blinks, startled. She's shifted about a dozen gears with no preamble, and he takes a moment to catch up.

But once he does, his answer is absolute. Unequivocal. 

"Yes."

"Not just us," she blurts to clarify, and she swears his expression sinks a little, "Rose wants to host. Since you said you were her friend, John mentioned you in front of her." His eyes widen, and Rey huffs a laugh. "She figured out to play along. But once she knew I had met someone..." his eyes widen further, "...or you know, made a friend..." that same imperceptible sinking, "or whatever. I, uh, then, she insisted that I at least invite you."

She squirms under a long moment of his silent scrutiny. "So...yeah."

"What's she serving?" He asks lowly, crossing his legs and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his propped shin.

"What?"

"You know, for dinner. What's she serving?"

Rey narrows her eyes at the glint in his. "You a fussy eater or something?"

He straightens. "Nah, I got past that at about three years old." He grins when it teases a surprised laugh out of her. "I'm just wondering."

"Spaghetti. It's always spaghetti with Rose. It's her best dish, so she saves making it for when she has someone over."

He smiles, slow and wide. "She ever made it for you before?"

Rey nods. "When John first came to live with me. And then again with the girls." Her smile becomes something twisted, bittersweet. "And when I first got out. They picked me up. I laid on their couch for hours. I was...in total disbelief. Then Rose called my name, and there was the table with this huge bowl of spaghetti."

Ben nods, slides one hand onto his knee. "My mom and I ordered a pizza my first night."

Rey takes a deep breath. "Oh really?"

"Yeah. From this Italian place I loved, in the town where she lives. Just counter service, nothing fancy." He glances out one of the basement windows, the sliver of visible, weedy grass blowing in the wind. "She forced me to readjust to the world right away."

"How so?" 

"She made me pick up the pizza." Rey gapes, but his voice is warm, so she tries to contain her shock. "The guy, Vincenzo, went white as a sheet when he saw me walk in. Said he thought he'd never see me again." He finally glances back over at her, eyes misty. "Anybody ever said anything like that to you?"

"Not exactly," she answers, after a fragile few seconds of quiet. "Rose is the only person I talk to, who knew me before."

Ben nods, acknowledging it, but is clearly unsure of how to respond, so he doesn't. It's that restraint that leads her to allow it to go one step further.

"Not that I talk to that many people now," she mutters.

"One more, now." He says, his voice quavering, and Rey thinks she must have imagined it, but when she looks up at him, the uncertainty is in his face, too.

She wants to banish that uncertainty. So she smiles a little, and keeps it aimed at him until he seems to relax. She nods, "One more."

\--

The light is slanting through Rose and Finn's kitchen window when he knocks on the door.

Rey pretends not to notice Rose noticing _her_ as she smooths down her dress, made of worn denim, a halter with a pointed collar and a full line of buttons from the hem to the neckline. 

Finn answers the door, there are some mumbled pleasantries barely audible over the fracas of the stove, the fan, and the kids. Sara is dancing around the living room with baby Paige in her arms, crooning some Spice Girls song, John and Lily are trying to see who can perfectly roll a baseball into a red Solo cup. 

He stands hunched in a corner. Rose refuses his offer to help, quipping that he probably takes up more space than he's worth, which brings out those slightly crooked, white teeth in a way Rey doesn't think she ever has.

She wonders, if she held less of herself back, if he might smile that way at some of her jokes, too.

They sit crammed around the small table, the baby's high chair pushed back a little just to make more room for the rest of them. Lily's shirt is speckled with sauce and Ben refuses to bite through the pasta, leading to long moments of his lips chasing a noodle, noisily sucking while he rolls his eyes, which reduces both John and Rose to fits of laughter. 

The adults share the couch and the children pile onto the floor to watch Wheel of Fortune. Rey gets up to use the restroom, spends a moment staring at herself in the mirror: at her flushed cheeks, and the way the steam from the spaghetti pot made her hair frizz out of where she'd braided it against her head.

When she emerges into the hallway, a hulking body is blocking nearly all the light from the rest of the apartment. 

"Hi," she says, her face illuminated as he leans against the wall to let more of it in.

"Hi," he whispers back, and it's incongruous, hearing such a small sound from the expanse of his body, but she decides that she likes it. 

Without the kids, or her friends, or even the looming, empty presence of the church, Rey realizes this will be the first conversation they've ever really had _alone._

She takes a deep breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The article about Ben's exoneration kept spiraling out of control. I must have written eight drafts before I settled on this one.


	5. Chapter 5

He's clearly come to find her, so she waits for him to say something, leaning against the same wall as him, grateful to be thrown back into shadow. "Thanks for inviting me."

She nods, looking down at her toes, poking them into the threadbare carpet runner. "Seems like you're enjoying yourself."

"More than I have in a long time," he rumbles, and it sounds almost...weary. She looks up to try to confirm that suspicion and he's already looking back, as though waiting for her. 

He takes a step closer, sliding his shoulder along the wall, his face grown more expectant.

Rey drags in a big breath, slowly, so as not to be obvious. Then she takes a minute step towards him too. He takes another small one, eagerly, as soon as hers is finished, and now they're maybe two feet apart. If Rey reached out, she could touch his shoulder. 

She doesn't. Instead she holds his gaze, wondering if she's managing to look bolder than she feels, and his gaze is back to full throttle, singing her, curling her at the edges like paper drawn too close to a fire.

Still, she doesn't look away.

"When you said that thing, last Thursday." He intones.

"What thing?"

"About how dinner wasn't gonna be just us." Her stomach flips.

"Yeah?" The word ends in an exhale.

"I..." He trails off, the burst of confidence seemingly faded, but they're on the precipice of something here, so she takes the reins from him.

"Were you..." she mumbles, the barest edge of breathless.

"Was I what?"

"Were you hoping it _might be_ just us?" she rushes out a little garbled, before she too loses hold of whatever she's feeling.

He grits his teeth. "I was." 

She nods, staring at the way the light curves around his shoulder in his light blue button up. "I think about that sometimes too." 

"You do?" He says, voice full of raw, juvenile hope.

"Yeah."

Each of them, another step closer. Close enough now that she can feel his breath stirring the loose hairs framing her face, close enough that when her ears register the clacking sound of the Wheel on the TV, she prays no one gets up, wondering where they are.

"So you wanna...get dinner some time?" 

"Yeah."

She grins but doesn't look up at him, so she watches the entire movement as his hand lifts from his side. 

She holds her breath.

Aside from that first day, bumping into each other, they've never, ever touched. 

His fingertip alights on the topmost button of her dress, on her sternum. The touch is so gentle that if she couldn't see his hand she wouldn't know it was there. His skin is still a full inch away from hers, metal and fabric filling up that space between, and yet she swears just the proximity has her skin feeling... _alive._

His finger trips from button to button, down her torso and past her hips, to the fabric stretched across her thighs. His arm isn't quite long enough to reach to the hem at her knees, but he doesn't need to count every button to make his point.

It's such a hard acceleration, from barely lingering glances and occasional smiles at group. It makes her wonder how long he's wanted to do and say these things, that he took the very first chance he got. 

_Has he been watching her while she mutters in that church basement, wishing he could drag his fingers down the length of her body? After she leaves, when he's headed somewhere else, how often does he think of her?_

_Is it all the time, just like how often she thinks of him?_

_Does he feel known, seen, witnessed in a way he never has before? Does it scare him, realizing he can't hide from someone?_

_Does it scare him yet draw him in, in a way he knows he can't refuse?_

In short: does he feel the same as her?

She thinks in this moment, watching his fingers curl as his hand drifts back from her dress, he just might.

She finally allows herself to breathe again, and she sees gaze rivet to her chest as it rises and falls.

"Dinner." She repeats, trying to shake off the layers of what's just happened before they reenter the living room.

"Dinner." He echoes back, but the word is as loaded as his touch was, and she gapes to reconcile this man, so naked in his wishes, so blatantly desirous, with the reticent, awkward man with whom she met that first day. 

She doesn't need to make it fit, though. Both of those versions exist within this man. And she wants both of them.

"I'll have to ask Sara first." She mentions, almost as an afterthought, and wishes she had said it sooner. "She's growing up. She deserves a say in who might be....around." 

He seems to digest the implications of that final word for a long moment before nodding. "Of course. It's good that you're including her."

She squints at him, as though waiting for more, so he mutters, "She deserves to be shown that her opinion matters."

That must have been a good answer, because Rey smiles at him one more time, gently, and then drifts away soundlessly, her footsteps muffled in the carpeted hall. He can hear Finn bragging that John guessed the last puzzle, the sound of the baby cooing as Rose plays peekaboo, and he lets the sound wash over him, pressing his heated forehead to the cool wall for a moment.

Dinner. With Rey. Just the two of them. 

He swears to himself, whether out of anxiety or excitement he isn't sure, and trails her back to the couch.

\--

In the kitchen, with John and Lily sound asleep in their room, Rey sits across the table from Sara and tells her about the dinner plan. 

Sara traces the plaid pattern on their sticky place mats for a brief moment. "I like him."

Rey sniffs, gives her a small, reassuring smile, and nods. Sara smiles back. Rey wonders sometimes, if she was always a child of brief words, or if she's learning that from Rey herself.

Sara gets up to go to bed. Rey sits at the table a while longer, thinking over and over that she should get a wet rag, wipe off the place mats. But every time she's about to, the same thought intrudes. 

This is life. 

This is life.

You have a life. 

\--

Why did he let Leia pick the restaurant?

He had to give her something, he reasons. He made the mistake of mentioning was going to dinner with a woman, and his mother insisted on knowing all the details. He resisted valiantly, not even giving up Rey's name, but he had to cede a tiny sliver control in order to get his mom off his back.

Which is how they end up at Chandrila, a tiny, low lit French place just outside the Loop. It only offers a tasting menu. The waiter put the napkin into Rey's lap for her, to her muted horror. 

They manage to make their own world in conversation. The same way they do at group. The same way they did in Rose's hallway.

He learns that she knows almost nothing about her biological family. Her father had a brother, who died young from diabetic complications, that ancestrally, they were from Manchester.

She looks a little bereft when she admits all of it. So he scrambles to create common ground.

"I don't know anything about my dad's side. My mom didn't either. She said she thought, sometimes, that he might know more than he wanted to let on. But, now we'll never get the chance. To find out if her suspicions were true." He clamps his mouth shut, blushing scarlet, before anything else unexpected sneaks out.

She doesn't respond, so he looks up to see her blushing too. He waits.

"I Googled you."

He blinks. "What? You-"

"I _Googled_. You, your case. I figured you deserve to know, but I didn't know how to tell you." 

He nods, sensing she needs some reassurance, that he won't flip the table and scream in her face. 

The man he was ten years ago might have done that.

"Did you...learn anything?" He asks haltingly.

She nods. "Some stuff about the case. Stuff about your uncle's case before you, and your family." 

He licks his lips. "I Googled you too."

She gasps, but it fades, and she nods. "You didn't find much," she says with surety.

"No," he can't help but chuckle a little, "it didn't help much. But I did it. I wanted to know. So you still deserve to hear that too."

They're interrupted by a waiter wordlessly dropping two new plates before them. Ben consults the heavy, embossed card describing the tasting menu for them. "Chicken mousse, garnished with pickled lotus and smoked purple carrots."

The food is perhaps the size of a roll of quarters. He catches Rey wrinkling her nose, when she thinks he isn't looking.

He throws down more cash than their check could possibly total. "Let's get out of here."

Her eyes dart up. "What?"

"This is not where either of us belongs." He states baldly, and she stares at the small stack of cash he tucked under the corner of his water glass.

She points to it, "Based on that, I think you might belong here."

He shakes his head. She stares at him, then nods in response to it, eyes narrowed.

She leads him silently out of the restaurant and up to the train. They get on the red line going north without a word.

She takes him to a walk-up window for pierogis. They eat on the sidewalk, joking about the fetish lingerie visible in a window across the street. They go another half block down for a drink in a sports bar, he orders a Shirley Temple. She glances at him but doesn't question it. Even though he wasn't asked, he volunteers, "I don't like substances that alter my mind." 

She nods; that article must have told her something, for this moment to make sense to her. For a brief second he's grateful he doesn't have to explain.

They both perform dismally at darts, Rey winning only because she's less bad out of the two of them.

The entrance to the bar is crowded when they leave, so Rey's hand gropes behind her among coats and bodies until she find's Ben's wrist.

He tries not to close his eyes at the feeling of her slender fingers against the inner skin of his forearm.

The very moment he has enough space to maneuver, he twists his hand and interlaces their fingers.

She turns to flash him a glance, surprise and heat in her gaze, but it lasts a mere second before she's plowing ahead, her body sliding through small spaces like a fish, whereas he barrels and bumps his way through that same path.

The strength of her grip never falters.

\--

She lives right off the brown line. He takes the brown line to get back to his apartment, so it's only fitting when she invites him in for a glass of water, after a long night of bowling. His back is sore and the nail polish on her thumb is chipped from the way she held the ball. He rubs his finger over the jagged edges of the remaining polish like a talisman. 

While they sit at the table, nursing their respective water glasses, she glances at the clock. 

"I have half an hour more before Finn drops off the kids."

She meets his gaze.

He doesn't remember getting up from the table, or heading for the couch. He doesn't remember who started it, or when he took his shoes off, or who pushed whom down onto the cushions.

All he knows is that being here, now, crushed against her body with their mouths entwined and her breath gusting out of her nose to wash over him...it's so _much_ , almost bordering on too much, after years of limited hugs from his mother and contact with no one else. He thinks she must feel the same way, noticing how she shivers every time his hands find a new spot, even if it's somewhere innocuous, like her upper arm. 

Neither of them can seem to get close enough, squirming and pressing desperately even as their lips gentle.

Rey manages to shove them apart five minutes before the kids are set to get home. He asks if he can stay long enough to say hello, at least, but she quietly asserts that she isn't ready and he acquiesces immediately. 

Whatever it takes to keep her around.

\--

She still keeps going to group.

Despite their dates, despite the increasingly intense make out sessions and the quiet afternoons spent strolling through museums or teaching the kids to play baseball, she keeps showing up.

Ben used to wonder why, but slowly, as the weeks, pass, he starts to get it. 

It's like some inner sanctum, or maybe some other dimension where their...well, Ben is loathe to call it a relationship, but their _thing_ doesn't exist.

They're back to who they were that first day. Two people with this impossible fact in common, that they've stared down the throat of their own mortality, only to be snatched back before they were swallowed. 

It takes them a long time to open up. Any shade of vulnerability is exploited in prison, used to manipulate you in some way, and they responded in the same way: not by seeking out safe people, but by shutting out everyone, shutting down any edge of weakness and sealing off their innermost thoughts. Breaking through that seal happens painstakingly. 

Their new closeness certainly hastens it. Ben finds he looks forward to group as much as he does to their dates. The silences they always had in that musty basement are even more comfortable now. 

He sits within one of them, content to watch her and wait, while she gathers her thoughts.

Finally, she takes a breath. "I don't know. I don't know that the idea of dying ever felt real. Like, any time something big was gonna happen in my life: when they'd tell me I was getting sent to a new home, or when I knew Plutt was just about to hit me again, or whatever. It never feels real to me until it happens. I can anticipate it all I want, but it does nothing to me. So dying never felt real." Her gaze darts up, meeting his instantly. Her eyes are far away. "It never felt real because it never happened."

She shifts her now-empty dish off her lap, the crumbs of the rhubarb crisp rolling towards the lip of the plate. "Was it ever like that for you?"

Ben shakes his head immediately. "No. In the beginning I saw death as a relief." Her eyes widen but she doesn't goad him for more, just waits. "I was still in withdrawal from the drugs." His chest squeezes, at the bodily memory of how he used to feel. "It was everywhere in me. There wasn't a cell in my body that wasn't permeated with that poison. My body, my mind weren't my own anymore. Death was a chance to let go of what had already been stolen from me." 

"Then what happened?"

He shifts his jaw. "Even after the drugs left my system, even as I came back to myself, I still think I wanted it to happen. From the grief of what I'd done to my dad." His eyes slide shut. "I just," his voice cracks, "even when I was totally lost, even when I was stealing and ruining people's lives, hurting our family, he just wanted to help me. He died thinking I wanted to kill him." The tears breach his eyes, and instead of swiping them away, trying to hide them, he lets her see. Its terrifying. And ecstatic. 

"I lost years, Rey. Years where I was someone else, where I only had the briefest moments of awareness, but every day was spent with someone else completely in control of me. And I chose it, in the beginning. I chose to let someone use me, and then, when he realized how much I could really be used for, he wanted complete power. All those years, drugging me, and I never even fucking noticed. I trusted him the entire time he was turning me into a monster."

He covers his eyes, not to hide from her, she thinks, but in a last ditch effort to hide from himself. From the shame and regret boiling over in his gut.

"Do you ever think..." she whispers, hesitant, "do you think it was your dad's death that woke you up?"

He nods behind his hand, squeezing the bridge of his nose hard, breathing deep. Finally he drops his hand and sees her, eyes also red, hands shaking where they grip the loose fabric on the leg of her jeans. 

"Nothing could keep me away from reality after that. The reality of what I did. No drug, no brainwashing, whatever. It consumed me. That act was more powerful than anything else."

She takes a breath, bites her lip, stops. "Do you ever wonder what more you might have done, if this hadn't changed things? How much more pain Snoke, and you, might have caused?"

He blinks. His mind has the landscape of his grief utterly memorized, every peak and valley of his pain mapped to the tiniest detail. 

And yet, in this moment, it's like Rey looked beyond some distant ridge, some place he never thought to look. 

He considers it. How many more families they might have torn apart. Countless more people addicted to deadly substances at his hand. Innocent people cheated, guilty ones absolved, the scale of justice and fairness tilted that much more towards evil.

"I'm not trying to say this was good, or right," she clarifies, still hushed, "but if there was any purpose in your dad's death, let it be that he saved you from...all of that." 

Ben doesn't believe in an afterlife. He never has. It sounds like a fairytale to him, one the entire human race is scared enough to choose to believe. 

But in that moment he hopes fiercely that his dad is somewhere, gifted with some second sight, privy to everything he stopped his child from committing. 

"How did it happen? After you...woke up?" She asks. It's a big, scary question, but neither of them are afraid of those anymore, and her voice doesn't quaver.

As he so rarely does, he lets his mind go back there.

\--

_Kylo opens his eyes to a shaft of sharp sunlight cutting across his eyes, wincing, and rolls over in bed, away from it. There's a pile of clothes on the bed, lumpy and preventing him from lying flat. He sits up, feels the need in his bladder, and stumbles to the bathroom._

_A splash of orange and brown vomit speckles the underside of the toilet seat. And it all comes back to him._

_Snoke's voice in his ear. The sound of familiar footsteps echoing into the living room downstairs, the cadence a little off due to a slight limp. The slow, creeping realization of who it was. The feeling of the cold metal in his hand, the handle of the gun slipping around a little from his sweat. His father pleading with him briefly, before going silent, realizing the inevitable._

_The blast of the two bullets; Kylo knows they didn't, but it felt like they created a shock-wave, breaking the sound barrier and sending him staggering several steps back._

_The rush to the bathroom, bruising his knees as he went down, emptying his stomach. Even then, sobbing and gasping, the full truth hadn't rooted inside him._

_Now it has, and he falls to his knees again, pain shooting through them, and he retches, but nothing is left inside him. Bile coats his tongue, some escapes into his sinuses, and he's coughing, eyes streaming, body wracked with shivers._

He's dead. He's dead. Because of me.

_It's there that Kylo spends the next three days, in that bathroom. Door locked and barricaded with a chest of drawers, even Snoke's sinuous whispers can't draw him out. He eats nothing, drinks with his head bent under the tap, but whenever he takes more than the slightest sip, it comes back moments later. Snoke's voice slowly goes from serpentine, to insistent, to pleading._

_Kylo's never heard the man plead. He wonders what could be wrong, that this man would be the one reduced to begging. How badly must Snoke need him for something?_

_It doesn't matter. The twisted devotion he felt for so long has turned uglier, into betrayal. Snoke has asked of him what no man has the right to ask. And for reasons he doesn't understand, Kylo finally feels awake enough to comprehend that. To let it fester, to let this unforgivable request take him over._

_On the fourth morning, he wakes to Snoke shaking the door frame he pounds so hard, threatening to knock it down if Kylo doesn't answer._

_Those three days and nights changed him. They gave him time for his foggy thoughts to solidify into something crystalline, something hard and clear and multifaceted. It changes how he thinks. It changes what he sees._

_His new, clear mind is the whisper in his ear, reminding him of what he stashed in the wall of the bedroom. The same wall he now faces from the other side. His new mind sparks the last shred of energy in his body as he steps into the bathtub and punches his arm through the tiles. A piece flies up and slices his face and he swears, cupping his free hand over it, while the other one, bloodied, too, gropes around in the dark hole before him._

_Snoke's already begun trying to break the door from its hinges when Kylo reaches out and throws it open._

_The man takes a huge breath to begin yelling, screaming probably, but then he registers the pistol held at eye level, and while his face doesn't change, he falls silent._

_"I can't," Kylo's throat closes up for a moment, cutting off his words, and he swallows painfully, opening it up enough to croak out, "I won't ever forgive you, for making me do that."_

_Snoke's face twists. "You would never be free, until you were free of him. Isn't that what you've always wanted? Fre-"_

_"I'll never be free as long as I'm tied to you!" Kylo roars, leaning forward to press the gun to the man's sallow, pocked forehead._

_It's then that a flare of fear finally ignites in his eyes. It's then that he seems to register, he may not be able to lie and strangle his way out of this. "Kylo, please, I have done nothing but protect you. I've shown you who you could become, what power you could have, if you were willing to take it."_

_"I don't want it anymore. The power or the money...any of it. It was supposed to make me happy, but I'm as fucked up as before. It's done nothing for me."_

_"I made you into someone!"_

_"You made me into a monster!" His voice is still so raw, even with the time passed since he stopped sobbing, stopped puking._

_Snoke's eyes widen. He's fully pressed against the wall now, the sweat on the back of his bald pate leaving a dark mark on the wallpaper. His hands creep up to shoulder height._

_"You killed that boy within me," Kylo says through clenched teeth, "the one who had a chance to be something good. To do the right thing. You took him and killed him, and then you made me kill Han."_

_Snoke takes a breath to refute him but the words die as the gun is pressed harder against his skull._

_"Kylo, Kylo, you don't want to do this, nothing good can come of thi-"_

_"Shut up."_

_"Ben, please, Ben. Do you want to bury him, is that it? He's still in the-"_

_"Don't fucking call me that, I swear to God."_

_Snoke lets out a panicked burble of laughter. "I'll call you whatever you want, just don't do this."_

_Kylo sees the terror in his gaze, the tremble in his hands. He wants this man to die afraid. He wants him to die knowing his own creation turned on him._

_Kylo pulls the trigger. Twice, just to be sure._

_It's Ben who watches the body fall. Ben who tucks the gun into the back of his jeans, Ben who replays some of Snoke's final words in his mind. Ben who walks to the back of the building. Who lifts the lid on the chest freezer. He doesn't need to move aside the white sheet there, one look at the shoes tells him who it is._

_It's Ben who calls the police, letting the law get him before the other criminals can._

_If this has to end, if_ he _has to end, he'd rather get to pick the ending. The one where he has a shot at seeing his mother again._

\--

He physically leans back in his chair, as though the pull of the story has finally released him. Rey is silent, eyes downcast, and Ben realizes his face is wet, that an unknowable number of tears have fallen in the course of the recollection, his mind so dissociated that he didn't even feel them.

She breaks the silence between them. "Can I hold you?"

It hadn't crossed his mind, but as soon as the words are out he needs it, desperately, but seeks to show none of that desperation as he nods and lets his arms fall out of his lap. She tries sitting on his knees, then sitting on the chair next to him and pulling him towards her, but none of it words, he's too large and she too small, so eventually they try the gray, sagging couch in the corner. He lays his torso across her legs, his head cradled under her arm, and he folds his legs up so that his knees can touch her opposite arm for maximum contact. 

After a while in the quiet she begins to hum. He's close enough to feel the vibrations. 

"Do you remember the relief, after Snoke was dead?" She whispers. 

He swallows, nods. Both have their eyes closed but he's sure she feels the movement.

"Did you tell the police yourself too?" 

She shakes her head. "One of the other kids did. But they asked me first. If I wanted to try to cover it up. A thirteen year old asking me that. I knew it would never work."

They sit a long time in the silence. She tries to remind herself of that same thought, the one that forces her to remember this is all really happening:

_This is life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The description of Ben's breath stirring Rey's loose baby hairs in the hallway is inspired by the scene in the show Poldark where he is hepling Demelza unlace the blue dress. Dunno if anyone else has ever seen it but DAMN the moment is CHARGED.


	6. Chapter 6

Their ninth date is entirely comprised of sitting on a blanket in the park, eating grapes and reading books side by side. By the end of the afternoon Ben is sitting with his head in her lap, her fingers sifting through his hair. His view of her face is obscured by the hardback novel she holds, but when he sighs, she peers over the top of the book down at his face. 

She spends a moment reading the expression there, then snaps her book shut and gently nudges at him to let her get up.

They stand pressed together, despite the sticky July heat, on the entire train ride home. Her sundress clings to the back of her sweaty thighs. He uses his body to prevent her from swaying too much as the train moves, and she rests her head on his chest. He wishes they weren't back to front, so that he could read her expressions, but the slow, consistent stroke of her thumb over his knuckles feels like indication enough. He grips the bar hard, so that despite the clamminess of his hand, his grip doesn't falter.

He walks barely a breath behind her, up all the stairs to her apartment. It's stuffy and quiet.

It's there, in the muted light of late afternoon under the shroud of her polka dot sheets, that he's finally inside her. 

It consumes him, consumes them both, from the moment they fall into her bed, the relentless drive to be nearer, to fuse together, to become something inseparable that they can't describe yet yearn for. It's what drives him to slide his hands into the bottom of her shorts rather than gather his patience to take them off properly. The same restless determination that leads to her tugging on the back of his t-shirt, doubtlessly stretching it out. 

He's seen her body before. He's kissed his way down her neck and let his fingers dig into the meat of her backside and stroked insistent fingertips down the furrow of her spine

But he's never seen her bare all at once. Miles of skin, so much that by the time he gets to her toes he feels like he has to look at her all over again, right away. She's never been so soft and open to him, inviting his gaze, watching hungrily for his reactions. He closes his eyes to feel the way her fingers trace a diagonal path across his chest, shuddering as one skims over his nipple. 

He rocks on top of her and settles there, in the wet, warm home between her legs, letting them both feel it, the anticipation that's made them wet and hard and softly gasping, waiting. 

He eagerly takes the condom she grabs from her bedside drawer. 

On the first press, the first time he's thrust to the hilt and can go no further to feel the lush, velvet depths of her, he feels his eyes mist over.

He hides his face in her neck, not wanting to be seen, not wanting his shock at the intimacy of the moment to be witnessed. Instead he simply pulls back a little, so that he might try to feel it again. Her soft, breathy sounds spur him on. Fingers pressing into his scalp ask for more, faster, and he is helpless to comply. 

The soft cotton and their smooth skin and the building pressure were something they both craved, in the abstract. But here, now, eyes locked as they really feel all those things, it's a mystery that they lived without this for so long. A mystery they didn't try this the second they first saw each other.

He calls out hoarsely, wordlessly, and she tightens, gasps. 

After, they both seem a little incapable of grasping what's happened. A little stunned, laying close but staring in different directions. 

He takes a deep breath, leans to press his lips to her shoulder, and marvels that the sick, scared man he once was could ever have earned this sort of love.

\-------

Lily has a nightmare. 

It's Ben who she wakes this time, because he's bigger than mom, gives better hugs, though Lily swore Ben to secrecy when she first admitted that to him. 

He and Rey were spooned in bed. Lily's tiny moon of a face appears next to him, whispering of a monster and chasing, and a road made of honey so sticky she couldn't run fast enough to get away. 

He strokes a hand over her hair, whispers that it sounds scary, but she woke up, it's over. He slides over, makes a little island of space in the middle of the bed for her. 

Rey wakes early in the morning, startled alert from a dream of cold metal bars and cinder block walls, the looming face of the man she killed waiting just outside her cell, unable to escape from him.

_She woke up. It's over._

Two slack, drooling faces greet her. Rey pulls Lily into her arms and carries her out, tiptoeing, as Ben grunts and rolls over, stretching himself out to occupy the entire bed with only his body.

\-------

The children are in the main house with Leia, in the guest room with the triple bunk beds, a novelty so adorable even preteen Sara wanted to take part in it. 

This is the third anniversary visit they've made out to Leia's huge country estate, with tons of grass for the kids to run around, a pond to practice their fishing skills, and acres of dense forest for Rey to explore when she gets the urge.

But after a full day of grilling burgers, of consoling John when he skinned his knee and arguing over if the kids should wear helmets when they ride their bikes around the massive circular driveway (Ben is against it, complaining that no cars will enter the drive, Rey is in favor, acerbically reminding him the paving stones can injure them just as badly as any car), they're both reasonably exhausted.

They lie in the huge white guest bed, in that little studio above the garage, air conditioner humming. He keeps thinking Rey falls asleep, but then she presses her feet closer to his, or she reaches to brush some hair out of her face, but finally she stills, and Ben manages to drift off beside her.

He has the dream. Of the man, silhouetted, standing next to his bed. He knows this nightmare, a common visual disturbance people have during episodes of sleep paralysis, and he knows from experience he must simply wait it out. He tries to drift off again, but the paranoia refuses to abate. This faceless dark outline has held so many faces over the years: Snoke, the ghost of his father, the enemies he tried hard not to make while in prison.

He takes deep breaths, wondering if he will get any real rest again tonight, when he hears someone cry out.

\-------

Rey wakes up, eyes sliding open in the quiet immediate way she developed while on the inside. 

All her senses immediately engage. Ben is still a lead weight next to her, so the movement in the room must not be him. 

She fractionally turns her head. 

A man with short hair, dressed in all black and with gloves, is creeping to Ben's side of the bed, gun trained on him. Her heart begins to pound. She feels sick, feels sweat beginning to bead on her temples, and registers, for a terrifying second, that she's felt precisely this way just once before in her life.

Rey's arm, already hanging down off the bed, extends to reach into her waiting purse. The man is now in the sliver of space next to Ben's prone body. 

In one swift, smooth movement, she rolls over and throws one leg over him, shielding his body with hers. She pushes the man's hands away from the bed with one hand, and with the other, she buries a switchblade into his shoulder.

He cries out, soft but shocked, and drops the gun, falling back against the wall. There's scarcely any space there, so he doesn't slump to the ground, his knees caught by the bed frame. 

Rey kneels on the edge of the mattress to hold him up against the wall, her knife still asunder inside his flesh.

"Who are you? What do you want with Ben?" She hisses, and the man grimaces but shoots her a murderous gaze, shaking his head. "Tell me. Or that knife goes in somewhere else."

She punctuates the threat by twisting the blade ever so slightly, and the man stifles another scream.

"You thought he was going to get away with murdering Snoke?" The man croaks, his voice thin and reedy, "We would wait, as long as we had to, but we were always watching, always going to come for him."

"He spent ten years waiting to die, I think his dues have been paid." She spits, eager to bury the knife again solely based on his reasoning, but she waits. 

"Yet he didn't. Only a life for a life could repay what he did." The man replies, his breathing growing even more labored.

Ben hasn't stirred one bit between her knees, and he's normally a light sleeper. Did Hux manage to fire a shot before she woke up? Another split second glance and she can't see any blood near Ben on the bed. Her mind reels, and then the answer hits her so suddenly she flinches. She's seen Ben do this before. This is another night of sleep paralysis. 

It's at this moment that Hux must see a chance, because he frees his uninjured arm from where it was pinned behind his back and punches Rey in the side of the head, throwing her down to the bed. But her hand still holds the hilt of her switchblade, and her grip doesn't falter, and as she reels from the punch she manages to catch him in the thigh, as he's crouched looking for the gun.

He screams again at the pain in his leg and she uses the momentary shock to push him, out from the side of the bed and onto the open floor, some of his blood smearing onto the whitewashed boards. She pushes the knife deeper into his leg before moving back to grab the gun. 

He wriggles, tries to stand, but she gets him pinned, face down, pressing one elbow into his shoulder to keep a steady stream of pain flowing.

"No matter what you do to me, Kylo Ren is going to die tonight." He insists.

"Why are you here? Who sent you?" She growls.

"Who sent me?" He says, voice thick with condescension, "I was third in command, after that bastard. I sent myself. All those other idiots are working for different bosses now."

"But not you," She presses, and shoves that shoulder down again, drawing a strangled cry from him.

"Not me. I stayed loyal. I waited, for the right moment to avenge what was done to the man I respected."

Rey's mind races. No one else involved. Just him. Not an entire group of criminals, still seeking to avenge their fallen leader. Just one sycophant who can't let it go. 

Just one threat to be eliminated.

"Fear is not respect." She mutters, almost to herself. "Do you want to know what your loyalty earned you?"

He's still bucking under her, and as strong as she is, with all the self-defense training she has, she knows she can't keep him down for much longer. "What's that?" He taunts, and even in this view, seeing only half his face where it's turned towards her, she sees his grimace flicker into a sneer.

"A bullet."

He goes absolutely still. Like an animal finally realizing it's trapped. His eyes widen, but Rey thinks of herself, and that man in her bed, and all she's learned about him. Of what they've built together, of their children. All that they've been through.

She looks down at the man beneath her. She presses a decorative pillow over his red hair, dimpling the yellow brocade with the barrel of the gun, just over his temple. She pulls the trigger.

The silencer makes the bullet sound more like a hollow thunk, except for when it hits and splinters a floorboard underneath him.

\-------

It's at this exact moment that Ben wakes, a huge, guttural gasp scraping its way into his lungs.

There's Rey, bloodied and disheveled, her eyes absolutely wild. A black handgun lies next to her, next to a prone body she kneels on top of.

From under one corner of a throw pillow he can see a familiar tattoo. There's a charred bullet hole in that pillow.

"Hux?" He mutters, too in shock to know what else to say. _The silhouette of the man._ He was in the throes of sleep paralysis, but that silhouette was real.

"Do you know this man?" Rey asks, nudging the pillow but not knocking it away from his head.

Ben nods. "He and I fought for Snoke's favor." He recites hollowly. "I won. I always won." 

"He came here to kill you." Rey explains, and Ben watches as she rises away from Hux's body. "I saw him with the gun, I thought you might already be gone. I panicked, I reverted back to th-"

"Stop, stop," Ben begs, seeing her get hysterical, but his words seem to work, because her rising shoulders, and rising tone of voice, both stop as she focuses her eyes on him.

"We've been through too much, you and me," she says, so deadly calm the sudden change almost alarms him, but he senses something in her. Resignation, acceptance maybe. "Before we met, and even since we got together. And now no one is going to take you away from me."

There's such steely resolve in her voice that he doesn't know how to answer, choking on a chest full of fear and relief and love and confusion. He just holds his arms out to her, and she enters them, squeezing each other so hard he's worried he might bruise her, except she's doing it back. They both take several frantic deep breaths. 

Rey's exploration of the woods is just what they needed. She knows of a spot, where the runoff from a small stream drips over the face of some rocks. The ground is soft, and the steady stream of water will help hasten decomposition. It's where they put him, covering him with a layer of the newly fallen autumnal leaves. Ben buries the remaining ammunition and the gun far apart from one another as they walk back. Rey fires up the potbelly stove and they burn the pillow, burn Hux's gloves and the contents of his wallet.

Rey scrubs her switchblade with an old toothbrush for several minutes, until it's sparkling clean, then slips in back into her purse.

Ben removes the splintered floorboard and feeds it into the fireplace. They clean the blood off the surrounding boards together. He pulls a clean board from under the bed and wedges it over the hole.

He's alarmed at how mechanical, how automatic this is. He knows this is not how Rey reacted the last time she committed murder. It's certainly not how he reacted either. But after all they've seen, after spending years staring down the dark mouth of death only to be snatched from its jaws and placed back into the too loud, too bright, Technicolor world, perhaps they aren't so afraid of the dark anymore. 

They fall into a weary, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW am i right??


End file.
